Sahara sand revealed a sensation: A lost world may once have revolved around the Sun…

The story of this lost planet was compiled by analyzing a meteorite called Northwest Africa (NWA) 12774. This half-kilogram stone belongs to an extremely rare group of stony meteorites known as angrites. They make up only about 0.09 percent of all meteorites found on Earth and are considered the oldest known eruptive rocks, formed only a few million years after the first solid bodies began to form in our solar nebula.

Scientists studying NWA 12774 discovered crystals of the mineral clinopyroxene that were unusually rich in aluminum. The creation of such a mineral composition requires enormous pressure, estimated at approximately 17.56 kilobars. For comparison, the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth, is only about one kilobar. Such extreme pressure strongly suggests that the meteorite is someone. was part of a very large planetary body, not a small asteroid. Based on these findings, researchers estimate that the parent body of Angrite could have a radius between 1,800 kilometers, which is similar to the Moon, and 3,300 kilometers, which is only slightly less than Mars’ radius of 3,390 kilometers.

Traces from the cataclysmic past

The chemical composition of angrite is significantly different from the rocky planets in our system, such as Earth and Mars. They are significantly poorer in silicon, the main component of rocks on those worlds. This indicates that the lost planet followed a completely different evolutionary path during the early history of the Sun system.

The prevailing theory is that this protoplanet was destroyed in a massive collision during the chaotic phase of our system’s formation approximately 4.56 billion years ago. Fragments of this cataclysmic event were scattered throughout the universe, and some eventually fell to Earth as meteorites, giving us the only remaining traces of this long-lost world. Although its fate was violent, it is possible that much of its material was embedded in other planets, including ours.

The idea of ​​missing planets is not new in astronomy. The most famous hypothesis is that of the hypothetical planet Theia, a Mars-sized body that, according to the giant impact theory, collided with the proto-Earth approximately 4.5 billion years ago.

It is believed that the energy released in that collision was so enormous that it melted large parts of the Earth’s mantle and ejected a disk of molten debris into orbit. This material eventually accumulated and formed the Moon. Similarities in the isotopic composition of rocks from the Moon and the Earth’s crust strongly support this theory, suggesting that both bodies were formed from the same “mixed” material after the collision.

Another theory deals with the so-called Planet V, a hypothetical fifth terrestrial planet that is some may have existed between Mars and the asteroid belt. According to this hypothesis, the gravitational perturbations of other planets pushed Planet V on an unstable trajectory, due to which it crossed the asteroid belt. Its movement through the belt scattered countless asteroids, triggering a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, an intense period of impact that shaped the surfaces of the inner planets, including the Moon and Earth.

The fate of Planet V remains unknown; simulations show that it was most likely ejected from the solar system or fell onto the sun. These theories, together with the evidence from meteorite NWA 12774, paint a picture of the dynamic and violent youth of the Solar System, an arena in which worlds have disintegrated, collided and disappeared, leaving behind only fragmented traces of their turbulent past.